Homecoming
by mysticxf
Summary: Kate goes back to the house she blew up and finds unexpected peace there.


Lost and its characters belong to JJ Abrams, Bad Robot and The Others. Kate goes back to the house she blew up and finds unexpected peace there.

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Lost – Homecoming  
By Mystic  
June 28th 2006

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It was sort of like answering a dare. Standing ten feet from where her front door used to stand. Standing on land where Wayne's ashes were scattered along with the ashes of a house she used to love, a house she came to hate. It would make her want to cry if she didn't have the overwhelming urge to run. Just being there brought back a fear she thought she'd buried with the place. It made her skin cold and her stomach tingle.

If she tried hard enough, she could still see the wooden steps. Steps that had been painted white, grey, brown, and green during her lifetime. Steps she'd sprained her ankle on, steps she'd been pushed off of, steps she'd had to repair when Wayne was too busy or too drunk to. Kate took in a deep breath, feeling the warm dry air melt into her lungs and she held it, her eyes scanning the trees that had started to grow there.

She didn't know who owned the land now. Her mother was long gone; the deed to the land probably lay untouched somewhere in a bank. She knew how her town worked. It wasn't large and it wasn't very populated. People would think the place would be haunted. It would take another generation of forgetting before someone would swoop it up to put a house on it. She'd probably be old and grey before children climbed up trees in the front yard again, or buried another time capsule.

Kate smiled. There were good memories there. It hurt to find them, weed through all the wicked thoughts that sprung to mind before them, but they were there. Hidden so well she could almost forget. But she hadn't.

She had a clear memory of her father, the man she still considered to be her father, coming home from some trip overseas. Kate knew she shouldn't have, she was only three, but it was there. She'd been waiting for him. Her arms hugging the wooden post at the end of steps to the front porch. She'd almost fallen asleep, but she heard his boots crunching down the gravel driveway and she stood slowly, teetering. He was still in his fatigues, buttoned up and proper. Her right hand came up in a salute -- something he'd taught her – and he saluted her back, then gave her a goofy grin before picking her up off the steps. "Oh, how I missed you, baby," he sighed into her hair.

Her mother used to wake her up early so they could make pancakes for him. She'd creep into her bedroom and poke her belly. "Hey, sleepyhead," her mom would whisper in that hoarse voice, pulling some random stuffed animal out of Kate's arms. "Wanna make daddy breakfast?" Kate could remember the joy that would build in the pit of her stomach and she'd rub her eyes and follow her mother down the long steps and into the kitchen.

The tree out front used to have a tire that hung from a long rope. Wayne had put it there. Some acknowledgement that she existed, when she'd been younger, after her father left. She remembered him leading her out of the house, his hand hovering at her back, not touching her, not yet. He pointed at it before lighting up a cigarette. "Have a swing, kid," he'd said, something almost amused in his tone as she leapt towards the tire and threw herself through the middle.

They used to watch Sesame Street together on weekends. Her sitting in her mother's lap, Wayne half asleep on the couch beside them. Her mother would sing along to the songs with her and they'd count in that ridiculous Transylvanian accent, giggling together when they got to twelve.

Once Wayne went with them to the beach. It was a long drive, a long weekend, and they packed a basket and started to drive. "I-Spy, with my little eye, something that starts with H!" She'd proclaimed five seconds in the car.

"Ain't it a bit early to start the travel games?" Wayne said on a sigh.

Her mother shook her head. "No, it ain't." She'd smiled at Kate. "Home."

"Right," Kate shouted back, her foot kicking the back of the driver's seat where Wayne managed a chuckle.

Kate walked around the house, the place where it once sat, remembering its outline. She peered up towards where the side windows were, where she used to watch people driving down the road, wondering where they were going. Turning around the back, she looked out at the land that used to be hers. Her jungle. Where her and Tom used to play hide n seek in the tall grass. Where her and her mother used to have picnics. Where Wayne tried to teach her how to play baseball.

She smiled, and it made her laugh. Made her start to cry. There used to be something innocent about the place. Something she used to think of as home, even when she hated it, when she was hiding under her bed, or on the roof, or in some tree with her breath held painfully in her chest. Kate kicked at the dirt, watching the wind pick it up and take it a few feet before it swirled. She sighed into the wind and walked back around the other side and then back to the front.

Going back up the long driveway, she glanced towards the car that waited. She asked Sawyer to come with her because she didn't want Jack to know.

He sat in the car, up at the edge of the dirt road that led down from the main road. Kate walked that road alone, she had to. She smiled when she pulled open the passenger side door and heard him turn the engine over. The cool air hit the droplets of sweat that were starting to form at her hairline and she sighed at the feeling.

Sawyer watched her, waiting. She glanced up at him quickly. The only thing that'd changed about him since they'd come back from the island was that he smelled like expensive cologne and wore fancy jackets. And he'd become her friend.

"When I first left, I never thought I'd miss the place." Kate snapped her seatbelt into place.

"Ain't that always the way things go," Sawyer sighed, his hands resting comfortably on the bottom of the steering wheel. "Don't miss it 'til it's gone." There was something about his tone that made her hurt for him, some longing, some nostalgia that went deeper than she was prepared to discuss with him at that moment in time.

Turning her eyes to him, Kate gave him a short nod. "We should get going."

"Don't you wanna take a picture?" He teased, a grin revealing deep dimples that always made her smile.

Kate shook her head, looking back out through the windshield at the place she grew up. The place she thought she'd never want to return to. She could see every inch of it, standing there staring back at her. "I don't need a picture," she said, listening to him sigh next to her, understanding, as they pulled back out on the road.

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Finis 


End file.
